Texas education commissioner pushes for EPISD employee discipline

Texas Education Agency Commissioner Michael Williams talked to educators, students, parents and others during a town hall meeting Wednesday at the El Paso Community College Administrative Service Center Boardroom.

Texas Education Commissioner Michael Williams on Wednesday reiterated that the El Paso Independent School District must soon act against employees who participated in a massive cheating scandal to avoid further state intervention.

Williams fielded questions from the public about the district's problems and about the state's high-stakes testing during a town-hall meeting organized by state Rep. Dee Margo, R-El Paso. The meeting featured other members of El Paso's state delegation at El Paso Community College's Administrative Services Center.

"There's no doubt that there are additional individuals for whom the wheels of justice have not moved as quickly," Williams said, referring to other EPISD employees who participated in the cheating.

"There are some others that perhaps may not find themselves in front of the justice system, but there should be some punishment directed in their way."

EPISD trustees and administrators have given conflicting accounts regarding an investigation to identify employees connected to the scheme.

Trustee Russell Wiggs, who attended the town-hall meeting, said the district started an investigation to identify employees who engaged in wrongdoing at the urging of state education monitor Judy Castleberry during a closed meeting two weeks ago.

In an interview with the El Paso Times earlier this week, interim Superintendent Vernon Butler said he had received no authorization to conduct an investigation to identify employees who participated in the cheating, and was waiting on federal authorities to release findings.

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District spokeswoman Renee de Santos in an email said Butler on Monday authorized the district's Human Resources Department to "further investigate issues and concerns to understand the current situation in EPISD."

De Santos did not respond to follow-up questions about the investigation, and Butler could not be reached Wednesday.

Wiggs repeated assertions from other trustees that the FBI has told the district not to take action against employees.

"They've started to ease that requirement on us to start taking action," Wiggs said. "My assumption is they're hopefully getting close to the end of their investigation."

The FBI said it did not prevent the district from conducting its own investigation.

The external company the district must hire to identify structural defects that allowed the cheating to happen, a requirement of the state's sanctions, will examine which employees participated in the cheating, Wiggs said.

School board President Isela Castañon-Williams on Wednesday also said the district had begun looking into which employees were involved in cheating.

The only current or former employee formally implicated by law enforcement authorities has been ex-Superintendent Lorenzo García, whom a federal judge last week sentenced to three and a half years in prison for creating a plan to game federal and state accountability measures.

García and other employees targeted mostly students with limited English skills at low-performing campuses by forcing some of them out of school, denying enrollment to others and reclassifying some students in the wrong grade.

If the district doesn't admonish employees who cheated students of an education, Williams said, options for further sanctions include assigning a conservator who could dictate changes at the district; appointing a board of managers, who would have more power than a conservator; or installing a new board of trustees.

Williams said he was not aware that a Texas Education Agency official had given the district a list of employees to fire, as Trustee David Dodge told the Times this week.

Dodge couldn't be reached for comment on Wednesday.

The agency gave the district no such list, Wiggs said.

"They've given us direction of what they'd like to see when we get information on employees, but that's dependent on what we gather as far as this external audit company and the FBI and through our own investigations internally," Wiggs said.

"I think you'll see some movement before the end of the year easily, but I can't give an exact time because it depends on how quickly we can identify those people."

Just because someone isn't formally charged in the case doesn't mean he or she won't face termination or reprimands if the district finds that person violated the state Educator's Code of Ethics or district policies, Wiggs said.

Williams said that he could not disclose a deadline for the district to act against employees or for him to determine other sanctions against the district, if necessary.

"I'm going to have to take whatever time is the right amount of time to make a determination," Williams said. "We're not going to take forever, and I know how to make a decision and I know how to make one expeditiously."

State Rep. Marisa Marquez, D-El Paso, said she had wanted Williams to explain a plan or a timeline for taking further action against the district.

"We've already been waiting for two years for EPISD to take corrective steps and they haven't," Marquez said. "There is an urgency now, particularly after this meeting, and we're hoping that provides some productive results."

Issues surrounding the new high-school end-of-course assessments were discussed on Wednesday.

Several parents expressed concerns about the end-of-course exams making up 15 percent of a student's grade in a class.

Parent Michelle Blumenfeld said one test should not carry as great a weight in determining a student's overall course grade. "Fifteen percent is a really large chunk," she said. "If your child is doing well all year or the teacher hasn't prepped them well enough, we think it's very unfair."

State Sen. José Rodríguez, D-El Paso, said he expects state lawmakers in the coming session to change the 15 percent rule because there has been so much opposition to it.

"I'm opposed to that weight measure," Rodríguez said. "I think the whole testing system is going to be under the microscope. While standardized tests may be a measure of student achievement and progress, we can't overlook input by teachers who are there with the kids day in and day out, and certainly we have to be able to take other factors into consideration, like student performance over the year."

Hayley Kappes may be reached at hkappes@elpasotimes.com; 546-6168. Follow her on Twitter @hayleykappes.